Word-Wednesday for January 21, 2026

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for January 21, 2026, the third Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of winter, the third Wednesday of January, and the twenty-first day of the year, with three-hundred forty-four days remaining, brought to you by Bead Gypsy Studio & Scandinavian Shoppe, 101 Main Avenue North, Roseau, with a Ekelund Linens & Scandinavian Food BOGO through the month of January. Open Monday through Saturday.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for January 21, 2026
Dark-eyed Junco
Junco hyemalis — jaashaawanibiisi in Anishinaabe — a year-round resident of Wannaska, heads north to the arctic to breed in the summer, but some may travel as far as Mexico to winter. These hardy six-inch gray birds have white bellies and white outer tail feathers that flash when in flight. Both sexes have dark eyes, but males have a slate-gray to charcoal chest, head, and back, while females have light tan to light gray-brown feathers. Listen for their trilled musical songs in March — a wonderful sign of spring — and in April watch for them migrating north to nest in Canada. Dark-eyed juncos usually nest in a cup-shaped depression on the ground, well-hidden by vegetation or other material, although nests are sometimes found in the lower branches of a shrub or tree.

January 21 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


January 21 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily, occasionally.


Earth/Moon Almanac for January 21, 2026
Sunrise: 8:07am; Sunset: 5:03pm; 2 minutes, 31 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 9:34am; Moonset: 8:30pm, waxing crescent, 9% illuminated.


Temperature Almanac for January 21, 2026
                Average            Record              Today
High             13                     41                       9
Low             -7                    -47                    -18

Letter Written During a January Northeaster
by Anne Sexton

Monday

Dearest,
It is snowing, grotesquely snowing
upon the small faces of the dead.
Those dear loudmouths, gone for over a year,
buried side by side
like little wrens.
But why should I complain?
The dead turn over casually,
thinking:
Good! No visitors today.
My window, which is not a grave,
is dark with my fierce concentration
and too much snowing
and too much silence.
The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts nor traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me.

 

Tuesday

I have invented a lie,
there is no other day but Monday.
It seems reasonable to pretend
that I could change the day
like a pair of socks.
To tell the truth
days are all the same size
and words aren’t much company.
If I were sick, I’d be a child,
tucked in under the woolens, sipping my broth.
As it is,
the days are not worth grabbing
or lying about.

 

Monday

It would be pleasant to be drunk:
faithless to my own tongue and hands,
giving up the boundaries
for the heroic gin.
Dead drunk
is the term I think of,
insensible,
neither cool nor warm,
without a head or a foot.
To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.
I will try it shortly.

 

Monday

Just yesterday,
twenty eight men aboard a damaged radar tower
foundered down seventy miles off the coast.
Immediately their hearts slammed shut.
The storm would not cough them up.
Today they are whispering over Sonar.
Small voice,
what do you say?
Aside from the going down, the awful wrench,
The pulleys and hooks and the black tongue . . .
What are your headquarters?
Are they kind?

 

Monday

It must be Friday by now.
I admit I have been lying.
Days don’t freeze
And to say that the snow has quietness in it
is to ignore the possibilities of the word.
Only the tree has quietness in it;
quiet as a pair of antlers
waiting on the cabin wall,
quiet as the crucifix,
pounded out years ago like a handmade shoe.
Someone once
told an elephant to stand still.
That’s why trees remain quiet all winter.
They’re not going anywhere.

 

Monday

Dearest,
where are your letters?
The mailman is an impostor.
He is actually my grandfather.
He floats far off in the storm
with his nicotine mustache and a bagful of nickels.
His legs stumble through
baskets of eyelashes.
Like all the dead
he picks up his disguise,
shakes it off and slowly pulls down the shade,
fading out like an old movie.
Now he is gone
as you are gone.
But he belongs to me like lost baggage.


January 21 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Hyaluronic Acid Day
• National Granola Bar Day
• Squirrel Appreciation Day
• National Hugging Day

January 21 Word Pun
Sven just invented the world’s strongest suction cup. 
We’re just not sure how he pulled it off.


January 21 Word Riddle
What will be the result of the current regime's new dietary recommendations to reduce intake of unsaturated fats, including margarine?*


January 21 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
DEAD, adj.

    Done with the work of breathing; done
    With all the world; the mad race run
    Through to the end; the golden goal
    Attained and found to be a hole!
                —Squatol Johnes


January 21 Etymology Word of the Week
toady
/ˈtōdē/ n., a person who behaves obsequiously to someone important, from "servile parasite," 1826, apparently shortened from earlier toad-eater "fawning flatterer" (1742), which originally (1620s) meant "the assistant of a charlatan," who ate a toad (all toads were thought poisonous) to enable his master to display his skill in expelling the poison. "The simple etymology fails to satisfy some writers" [Century Dictionary, 1899]. Or perhaps it is from or influenced by toady (adj.) "loathsome," which is attested from 1620s; toady (n.) as "young toad" is from 1680s (figurative, of persons). The verb toady "be a toady for" is recorded from 1827 (toad-eat as a verb is by 1766). 

January 21 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1324 Zen Buddhist religious debate between Tendai and Shingon.
• 1522 Head Inquisitor Adrian Florisz Boeyens is elected pope.
• 1549 Act of Uniformity passed by the English Parliament requiring clergy use The Book of Common Prayer.
• 1677 First medical publication in America, a pamphlet on smallpox, is published in Boston.
• 1789 The first American novel, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy is published.
• 1818 Keats writes his poem On a Lock of Milton's Hair.
• 1846 First edition of Charles Dickens' newspaper The Daily News is published.
• 1863 City of Dublin leases part of Cattle Market for 100,000 years.
• 1874 Franz Grillparzer's Libussa premieres.
• 1879 Henrik Ibsen's play Et Dukkehjem (A Doll's House) premieres.
• 1901 Clyde Fitch's play The Climbers premieres.
• 1904 Leos Janacek's opera Jenůfa premieres.
• 1908 August Strindberg's Spoksonaten premieres.
• 1921 British crime writer Agatha Christie publishes her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introducing the character Hercule Poirot.
• 1939 George Kaufman and Moss Hart's play American Way premieres.
• 1950 T. S. Eliot's play The Cocktail Party premieres.
• 1961 Francis Poulenc's Gloria premieres.
• 1983 Bollingen Prize for poetry awarded to Anthony E Hecht.

January 21 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1659 Adriaen van der Werff, Dutch painter, engraver and architect.
• 1735 Johann Gottfried Eckard, German composer.
• 1751 Josephus Andreas Fodor, Dutch Classical era violinist and composer.
• 1762 Giuseppe Antonio Silvani, Italian and composer.
• 1775 Manuel Garcia, Spanish opera singer and composer.
• 1792 Tsjalling Hiddes Halbertsma, Dutch Frisian merchant, poet, and story teller.
• 1801 Ramon Vilanova y Barrera, Catalan composer.
• 1804 Eliza Roxcy Snow, American poet.
• 1814 Thomas Attwood Walmisley, English organist, composer.
• 1817 Amalie Mánesová, Czech painter.
• 1823 Alexandre Goria, French pianist and composer.
• 1825 Imre Madách, Hungarian writer.
• 1848 Henri Duparc, French composer.
• 1859 Antoni Wincenty Rutkowski, Polish composer and pianist.
• 1867 Ludwig Thoma, German writer.
• 1878 Egon Friedell, Austrian writer.
• 1883 Olav Aukrust, Norwegian poet.
• 1883 Francis Hackett, Irish writer.
• 1887 Alfred Henry Ackley, American composer.
• 1891 Nikolai Golovanov, Russian conductor and composer.
• 1891 Timothy Mather Spelman, American composer.
• 1894 Teresa Deevy, Irish dramatist, short story writer.
• 1897 René Iché, French sculptor.
• 1899 Alexander Tcherepnin, Russian pianist and composer.
• 1904 Richard P. Blackmur, American poet.
• 1904 Robert "Juice" Wilson, American jazz violinist
• 1905 "Ossie" O.S. Stevens Nock, English railway write.
• 1906 Fred Fehl, Austrian-American photographer.
• 1906 Igor Moiseyev, Russian choreographer.
• 1908 Fred Sanford, Sanford and Son.
• 1909 Todor Skalovski, Macedonian choral director and composer.
• 1910 Eua Sunthornsanan, Thai singer, composer.
• 1920 Torsten Nilsson, Swedish organist, choral director, composer.
• 1921 Todor Popov, Bulgarian composer.
• 1922 Jean Paul Vroom, Dutch artist and print maker.
• 1921 Felix Maria Davídek, Czech poet.
• 1923 Dina Babbitt, Czech artist.
• 1923 Judith Merril [Judith Josephine Grossman], American-Canadian science fiction writer.
• 1924 Shafiga Akhundova, Azerbaijani opera composer.
• 1926 Brian Brockless, English organist and composer.
• 1937 George Flynn, American pianist, composer.
• 1939 Mary Ellen McAnally, American poet.
• 1944 (Frank) Neely Bruce, American composer.
• 1944 Uto Ughi, Italian violinist and conductor.
• 1946 Vincent Placoly, Martinique writer and playwright.
• 1952 Louis Menand, American writer.
• 1955 Jeff Koons, American artist.
• 1956 Forrest Gander, American poet.
• 1958 Rhona Clarke, Irish composer.
• 1985 Sasha Pivovarova, Russian artist.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge 
Write a story or pram from the following words:

• bibliotaph: /BIB-lee-uh-taff/ n., a person who hoards books without reading them or without allowing them to be seen or read by others; a person who jealously keeps books or their contents to himself or herself.
• blentonist: /BLEN-toh-nist/ n., one who locates water or other natural resources by divining or dowsing.
• caballer: /kuh-BAH-luhr/ .n., a person who engages in or is believed to engage in plotting or intrigue; a member of a cabal.
• glomerare: /gloh-meh-RAH-reh/ v., LATIN, to gather together, cluster, or form into a ball or mass.
• hubbly: /HUB-uh-lee/ adj., of the ground, a road, etc.: rough, uneven, bumpy.
• labiomancy: /LAY-bee-uh-man-see/ n., the action or skill of apprehending what a person is saying by observing the movement of his or her lips; lip-reading.
• minging: /MING-iNG/ adj., foul-smelling.
• runnel: /RəN-(ə)l/ n., a narrow channel in the ground for liquid to flow through; a brook or rill; a small stream of a particular liquid.
• sub jove frigido: /sub JOH-vee FRIJ-uh-doh/ adv., LATIN, under the chilly sky; in the open air.
• woodyer: /WŪ-da-iur/ n., a person who looks after the trees in a wood or forest, a forester or forester's assistant; a person who fells or lops trees for timber or fuel.

January 21, 2026 Word-Wednesday Feature
friendship
/FREN(d)-SHip/ n., the emotions or conduct of friends; the state of being friends, from Old English freondscipe "friendship, mutual liking and regard," also "conjugal love;" see friend (n.) + -ship. Similar formation in Dutch vriendschap, German Freundschaft, Swedish frändskap. Wannaskan Almanac celebrated another anniversary this January, and it was the first time since just before the writers made this commitment that we were all able to celebrate in the same room together. What better reason to celebrate words of friendship, a relationship that takes so many forms:

Friendship, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary

Friendship is a virtue which comprehends all the rest; none being fit for this, who is not adorned with every other virtue.

Mary Astell

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter: he that has found one has found a treasure.

Apocrypha—Ecclesiasticus 6:14–16

Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect.

Erma Bombeck

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

James Boswell

A friend is like a good bra: hard to find, comfortable, supportive, always lifts you up, makes you look better, never lets you down or leaves you hanging, and always close to your heart.

Author unknown

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.

Edna Buchanan

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

Muhammad Ali

Friendship is a difficult, dangerous job. It is also (though we rarely admit it) extremely exhausting.

Elizabeth Bibesco

If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence. 

Charles Bukowski,

’Tis great Confidence in a Friend to tell him your Faults, greater to tell him his.

Benjamin Franklin

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of a sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words—that is friendship.

Henry Ward Beecher

There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I’ve been barbecued, stewed, screwed, tattooed, and fried by people claiming to be friends.

W. C. Fields

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 

The Bible—John 15:13

No friend can supply the absence of a good husband.

Abigail Adams

When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

Edward Abbey

There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

Benjamin Franklin

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.

Aristotle, in Nichomachean Ethics

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.

Jane Austen

The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment is a secret which but few discover.

Joseph Addison

I keep my friends as misers do their treasure.

Pietro Aretino

Many analogies have been made of friendship–it’s like shifting seasons, or a plant, or a really good bra–but I picture friendship most clearly as a house, jointly occupied. Each party agrees to perform their end of the upkeep, and the result is something shared that can last.

Stephanie Bai

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.

Aesop

Thus much for thy assurance know;
a hollow friend is but a hellish foe.

Nicholas Breton

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own; we must look at their truth to themselves, full as much as their truth to us.

Charlotte Brontë

My friends are my estate.

Emily Dickinson

This communicating of a man’s self to his friend works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.

Francis Bacon

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

Emily Brontë

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

George Eliot

Love is only chatter,
Friends are all that matter.

Gelett Burgess

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

From A Year with Rilke, January 21 Entry
The Man Watching, from Book of Images

What we triumph over is so small,
and the victory makes us small too.
The eternal and uncommon
refuses to be bent by us.
Like the angel who appeared
to the wrestler in the Old Testament:
when his opponent's sinews
grow hard as metal in the struggle,
they feel to his fingers like strings
on which to play a depthless melody.

Whoever is conquered by this angel
when the angel does not refuse to fight
walks away erect and ennobled,
strengthened by that fierce hand
that, like a sculptor's, shaped him.
Winning does not tempt that man.
His growth is this: to be defeated
by ever greater forces.

Spirit of War
by Auguste Rodin

Be better than yesterday, 
learn a new word today, 
try to stay out of trouble — at least until tomorrow, 
and write when you have the time.






*A butter world.